Square Enix pulls the plug on Shinra Technologies

Helmed by former Square Enix president Yoichi Wada, Shinra Technologies, the cloud gaming branch of Square Enix is reportedly being closed down. The announcement was made on the company’s website on January 5th. The decision was apparently made on the basis of lack of funding, as the company was not able to garner enough interest from third party investors for new capital to fund its operations.

It has been expected that Shinra Technologies will deal a whopping $16.8 million (which is about two billion yen) loss to Square Enix, an amount the gaming giant themselves note is “extraordinary”.

In a statement released by the company, Square Enix said, “As a cloud platform operator, [Shinra Technologies] has been trying to raise funds necessary for further business operations from third party investors. However, [Shinra Technologies] has found no prospective investors at this point, and therefore has to discontinue its business.”

The company arm, named after a fictional power company in Final Fantasy VII, was first established in 2014 following an announcement in September during Tokyo Game Show. Its main vision was to create a “virtual supercomputer” platform for developers to make new games on. Said platform was supposedly able to allow developers the use of several servers in order to make “better games”, using multiple resources for enhanced physics and sharper graphics. By using the cloud, developers were able to free themselves from limits imposed on development by hardware restrictions.

Along with Human Head (the developers behind Prey) and Hardsuit Labs (creators of free-to-play shooter Blacklight: Retribution), both Republique-developer Camouflaj and Just Cause 3 developer Avalanche Studios were reportedly on board for the project before its untimely closure.

All branches of Shinra Technology, including those in New York and Tokyo, will be dissolved.